Contact them.Get to the auction early - park where you can see who is getting out of the auctioneer's car - sometimes they will bring a straw person to RUN THE BIDS - that is to get the audience excited and to bid - often times there are no bidders and the straw person trys to get the audience excited about bidding.If the auctioneer or their associate is on the phone during the auction - sometimes they pretend to have a bidder - you have a right to ask who they are and if they are qualified to bid - probably not!

I felt like starting a new thread whereas there have been several threads.. one particular as of late where people that do not have an real contract pretending that everybody keeps their word and that they would keep their word too.

Pretend to be a prospective tenant and make some calls.

I'm new and don't pretend to know everything but I've always had trouble with the hangups around a cap rate (maybe because I'm in an expensive market I'm prejudiced).

Usually collected as part of the application process.Fraud: let’s not pretend it doesn’t happen.

Hard to run the numbers from there, but lets do it anyway.Using your numbers above, using round numbers and pretending you bought at 70%, you've got:Buy:  $335kRehab: $50KAcquisition costs: $5k closing (seems high)$19k (5% of $385k rounded)Holding costs:  Interest: $29k (6 mos @ 15% on $385k rounded)Utilities: $3kTaxes:  $5k (No idea whats accurate here for there)Insurance: $2kTOTAL IN:  $475kPlus Sales costs:  $20,000  (3% plus some money for repairs concessions)Total is $495k with a $550k sales price or an expected profit of $55k.Really, though, your money costs should be way lower than this, though with better rates and nobody is going to let you borrow the full amount, you'll have to have 15% or so in the deal, plus some operating capital.When you throw the "skin in the game" number in there and your "maximum loan amount" it throws things off because that's not really how you analyze the deal. 

Then, pretend you are a bank, load the property with 5% vacancy, 5% mgt, 5% reserves and 5% other on top of current expenses and see if it'll make debt service.

Don't lie and pretend like you are helping them. 

If you don't know something, don't pretend that you do.

Many agents like to pretend they are so busy they can't return your phone calls.